The International Cessna^® 170 Association

Question for the knowing minds: Does anybody have any experience spinning the 170 into a narrower door? I am thinking about putting in a runway, and have access to a 100x50 storage building, but it currently only has a 24’ wide door. Eventually it would be nice to put a true hangar door in, but right now it isn’t in the cards. I’m curious if I can spin the 170 through a 24’ door, or if the runway will just be for visiting, and have it hangared where it currently is.

It would depend if the ramp-area outside the door would accommodate the necessary width to place it on dollies, move it sideways until one-wing were outside…then move it sideways until the outside wing were moved outboard of the bldg…then bring the other wing outisde, realign the fuselage and use the dollies to proceed from that point. (This is all purely in my imaginary world. I doubt you can find a hangar without obstructions outside the door to accommodate it.)
It would also require room inside the hangar outboard of the door to accommodate the tail-feathers which will be at an angle.

The best way to visualize this is to make cardboard silhouette cut-outs to scale…and attempt it with those models.

I use vehicle dollies to move my 170 sideways (angled) toward my 44’ door to get it past other equipment in the hangar….and it’s such a pain in the patootie I usually cancel the plan to fly it that day and use the 172 already parked at the door.

Yeah, echoing what George writes, if you look at page ii of the 1956 Owner’s Manual you’ll find a platform drawing of the 170 with dimensions. Print that out adjusting the scale to fit on graph paper. Length is just short of 25’ and wingspan is 36’. It looks like you could slide the plane in sideways on dollys — ideally on some sort of rail system. Alternatively, doing two pivots — one on each wheel — might also work. Place pins on the tires of your scale drawing to examine this idea. Here a permanent built in lazy susan at the pivot points would help.

I dealt with this a while back when I owned a Pitts S1. A friend offered to share his T-hangar which housed a Grumman AA1. I made scale printouts of each one and drew a map of the hangar on graph paper. The most brilliant idea (I thought) was using a hole punch to mark the location of my Pitts’ tires…this allowed me to use my fingers as pivot points as I found the best way to park the airplane. It wasn’t very precise but easily showed the best way to park the planes.

Ended up parking the AA1 further to one side of the hangar, pushing the Pitts nose first towards the Grumman’s right wing and the rotating the Pitts into position in the opposite corner of the hangar. Cheapest hangar rent ever.